Character Theology: Engaging God through His Cast of Characters

by Tom Steffen and Ray Neu

Character Theology provides a natural, universal way for the world to engage God through his chosen cast of characters. As the media eras continue to change (oral to print to digital-virtual), too many Bible scholars, and consequently pastors and Bible teachers in the West and beyond, lack capability to effectively communicate Scripture to Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. These generations find little if any relevance in the Christianity promoted by those stuck in modernity’s sticky abstract systematic theology. Character Theology relates, sticks, and transforms these generations. Why? Because people grasp and engage God most naturally and precisely through his interaction with biblical characters and their interaction with each other! Characters communicate the Creator’s characteristics. The roadmap to the recovery and expansion of Christianity in the twenty-first century will be through Bible characters.

The Return of Oral Hermeneutics: As Good Today as It Was for the Hebrew Bible and First-Century Christianity

by Tom Steffen and William Bjoraker

Have Western exegetes turned an Eastern book into a Western one? Has our fondness for a fixed printed text capable of being analyzed with precision and exactitude blinded us to other hermeneutic possibilities? Does God require all people to be able to analyze grammar to interpret Scripture? Does God assume all people can interpret Scripture through oral means? The authors recognize the effects of centuries of literacy socialization that produced a blind spot in the Western Christian world–the neglect by most in the academies, agencies, and assemblies of the foundational and forceful role orality had on the biblical text and teaching. From the inspired spoken word of the prophets, including Jesus (pre-text), to the elite literate scribes who painstakingly hand-printed the sacred text, to post-text interpretation and teaching, the footprint of orality throughout the entire process is acutely visible to those having the oral-aural influenced eyes of the Mediterranean ancients. Could oral hermeneutics be the “mother of relational theology”?

Romans and Paul’s Narrative Thought World

by Ben Witherington III

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Paul’s narrative thought world: the tapestry of tragedy and triumph

by Ben Witherington III

It is a common belief that Paul’s letters are not stories but rather theological ideas and practical advice. Ben Witherington III thinks otherwise. He is convinced that all of Paul’s ideas, arguments, practical advice, and social arrangements are ultimately grounded in stories, some found in the Hebrew Scriptures and some found in the oral tradition.

The Biographical Bible: Exploring the Biblical Narrative

by Ruth A. Tucker

The Biographical Bible offers an engaging overview of Scripture through the lens of the fascinating figures who populate its pages. Through insightful reflections on the lives of over eighty individuals, this unique book captures the essence of these colorful characters, warts and all. They are people who have much in common with twenty-first century people of faith. Here the reader will find a lively and insightful narrative that brings the Bible to life as no other book does.

The Complete Literary Guide to the Bible

edited by Leland Ryken and Tremper Longman III

A Complete Literary Guide to the Bible is consideration of the Bible from a literary perspective, reflecting contemporary interest in the academic world of the Bible as literature. This collection of essays addresses both specific books of the Bible and general topics dealing with the Bible. The four main sections of the book are; The Bible as Literature, The Literature of the Old Testament, The Literature of the New Testament, and The Literary Influence of the Bible.

The Blue Parakeet, 2nd Edition: Rethinking How You Read the Bible

by Scot McKnight

The gospel is designed to be relevant in every culture, in every age, in every language. It’s fully capable of this, and we are called to discern how God is speaking to us today. But applying its words and directions on how to live our lives is not always easy.

Professor and author of The King Jesus Bible Scot McKnight challenges us to rethink how to read the Bible, not just to puzzle it together into some systematic belief or historical tradition but to see it as an ongoing Story that we’re summoned to enter and to carry forward in our day.

Throughout the Bible, God speaks in each generation, in that generation’s ways and beckons us to be a part of his amazing story. The Blue Parakeet is a profound meditation on how God is speaking to our generation through His Word. 

The New Testament and the People of God

by NT Wright

Twenty years on from its original appearance, this ground-breaking first volume in N. T. Wright’s magisterial series, ‘Christian Origins and the Question of God’, still stands as a major point of reference for students of the New Testament and early Christianity.

This latest impression has been completely reset to make Wright’s elegant and engrossing text more readable. ‘The sweep of Wright’s project as a whole is breathtaking. It is impossible to give a fair assessment of his achievement without sounding grandiose: no New Testament scholar since Bultmann has even attempted – let alone achieved – such an innovative and comprehensive account of New Testament history and theology.’ Richard B. Hays

The Christian Story, Volume 1
A Narrative Interpretation of Basic Christian Doctrine

by Gabriel Fackre

This book is for those struggling with the question What is the Christian faith? The answer given here unfolds in the form of a story. Gabriel Fackre interprets the basic Christian beliefs as “chapters in the biography of God,” a narrative technique that shows the drama and dynamism of what God is doing in the world. En route, Fackre covers the standard teachings of the Christian tradition, beginning and ending with the doctrine of God and treating the subjects of creation, fall, covenant, Christ, church, salvation, and consummation.

Having been thoroughly revised and updated in this third edition, The Christian Story now develops in more detail the doctrine of the Trinity, takes up the issues of religious pluralism and Jewish-Christian dialogue, and offers a perspective on angelology. New appendices discuss the use of inclusive language and describe the surge of writing in the field of systematic theology.

The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading

by Meir Sternberg

“This . . . is a brilliant work.” —Choice

“[Sternberg] has written a very important book, both for his comprehensiveness and for the clearly-avowed faith stance from which he understands and interprets the strategies of the biblical narratives. . . . a superb overview . . . ” —Theological Studies

” . . . rated very highly indeed. It is a book to read and then reread.” —Modern Language Review

” . . . Sternberg has accomplished an enormous task, enriching our understanding of the theoretical basis of biblical narrative and giving us insight into a remarkable number of particular texts.” —Journal of the American Academy of Religion

” . . . an important book for those who seek to take the Bible seriously as a literary work because it shows, more clearly and emphatically than any book I know, that the Bible is a serious literary work—a text manifesting a highly sophisticated and successful narrative poetics.” —Adele Berlin, Prooftexts

Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology

edited by Stanley M. Hauerwas, L. Gregory Jones

Narrative Theology is still with us, to the delight of some and to the chagrin of others. ‘Why Narrative?” is in reprint because it represents what is still a very important question. This diverse collection of essays on narrative theology has proven very useful in university and seminary theology classes. It is also of great use as a primer for the educated layperson or church study group. Jones and Hauerwas have done an excellent job of selecting representative essays that deal with appeals to narrative in areas such as personal identity and human action, biblical hermeneutics, epistemology, and theological and ethical method.

Scripture as Communication, 2nd Edition: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics

by Jeannine K. Brown

Jeannine Brown, a seasoned teacher of biblical interpretation, believes that communication is at the heart of what happens when we open the Bible. We are actively engaging God in a conversation that can be life changing. In this guide to the theory and practice of biblical hermeneutics, Brown emphasizes the communicative nature of Scripture, proposing a communication model as an effective approach to interpreting the Bible. The new edition of this successful textbook has been revised and updated to interact with recent advances in interpretive theory and practice.

Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul

by Richard B. Hays

Paul’s letters, the earliest writings in the New Testament, are filled with allusions, images, and quotations from the Old Testament, or, as Paul called it, Scripture. In this book, Richard B. Hays investigates Paul’s appropriation of Scripture from a perspective based on recent literary-critical studies of intertextuality. His uncovering of scriptural echoes in Paul’s language enriches our appreciation of the complex literary texture of Paul’s letters and offers new insights into his message. “A major work on hermeneutics…. Hays’s study will be a work to use and to reckon with for every Pauline scholar and for every student of Paul’s use of Old Testament traditions. It is sophisticated, in both a literary and theological sense, and written with considerable wit and confidence.”―Carol L. Stockenhausen, Journal of Biblical Literature

“Hays has without doubt posed the right question at the right time within the horizon of a particularly important problematic…. A new beginning for the question concerning the reception of the Old Testament in the New.”―Hans Hübner, Theologische Literaturzeitung

“A powerful reading…. [Hays’s] careful and fresh exegesis … challenges not a few traditional or highly regarded readings…. A major contribution both to Pauline studies and to our understanding of earliest Christian theology as a living dialogue with the scriptures of Israel.”―James D. G. Dunn, forthcoming in Literature and Theology

“A fresh interpretation of Paul’s references to the Jewish Scriptures…. Written in a lively, semipopular style, this important study succeeds in showing that Paul’s scriptural quotations and allusions are often more ’polyphonic’ and rhetorically meaningful than traditional exegesis has allowed.”―David M. Hay, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment

edited by Bruce W. Longenecker

Are Paul’s letters undergirded and informed by key narratives, and does a heightened awareness of those narratives help us to gain a richer and more rounded understanding of Paul’s theology? The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed an increasing interest in the narrative features of Paul’s thought. A variety of studies since that period have advanced “story” as an integral and generative ingredient in Paul’s theological formulations. In this book, a team of leading Pauline scholars assesses the strengths and weaknesses of a narrative approach, looking in detail at its application to particular Pauline texts.

How Bible Stories Work: A Guided Study of Biblical Narrative

by Leland Ryken

This is the first of a projected six-volume series called Reading the Bible as Literature (the second volume being Sweeter Than Honey, Richer Than Gold). An expert at exploring the intersection of the Bible and literature, Ryken shows pastors and students and teachers of the Bible how to appreciate the craftsmanship and beauty of biblical narrative and how to interpret it correctly. Dr. Ryken goes one step further than merely explaining the genre of story-he includes exercises to help students master this rich literary treasure.

The Art of Biblical Narrative

by Robert Alter

Renowned critic and translator Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative has radically expanded our view of the Bible by recasting it as a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. In this seminal work, Alter describes how the Hebrew Bible’s many authors used innovative literary styles and devices such as parallelism, contrastive dialogue, and narrative tempo to tell one of the most revolutionary stories of all time: the revelation of a single God. In so doing, Alter shows, these writers reshaped not only history, but also the art of storytelling itself.